


"is this okay?"

by clickingkeyboards



Series: one hundred ways to say 'i love you' [42]
Category: Murder Most Unladylike Series - Robin Stevens
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Panic Attacks, Trauma, arsenic - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-12
Updated: 2019-12-12
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:01:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21806320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clickingkeyboards/pseuds/clickingkeyboards
Summary: Bertie Wells, despite his unfailingly English persona, cannot help but panic at the very mention of arsenic. Harold Mukherjee cannot quite work out what the cause of his startlingly odd actions is.Canon EraWritten for the forty-second prompt in the '100 ways to say "I love you"' prompt list by p0ck3tf0x on Tumblr.
Relationships: Harold Mukherjee/Bertie Wells
Series: one hundred ways to say 'i love you' [42]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1533164
Kudos: 27





	"is this okay?"

“What is in this?”

I shoot Bertie a look. “Why do you care?”

He plays his fingers along the side of the menu. “I’m allergic to almonds,” he lies, easy as anything truthful he has ever said. I know that it’s a lie, simply because I have seen Bertie Wells eat almond cake before.

With a concerned glance cast his way, I pick up the menu and say, “No almonds.”

I watch him visibly relax as he digs in his fork to scoop up a bite. “Thank you.”

There is something about Bertie Wells that makes me think. Long ago, I acknowledged what I think of the fair sex and held it up against what I think of my own: I am homosexual, and it is rather easy to tuck away. While others around me fawn over the girls who work in the flower shop and Fitzbillies, I lust after fictional bachelors and pretend to be so uninterested in romance that Alfred has dubbed me a ‘blue-stocking’.

I do not feel for him on a level as baseless as other men feel for girls. In my chest, there is a heavy ache that hums as a painful reminder of my condition. When I look at him, my heart hammers as if I should die, yet it slows at his touch when his fingers lay on my wrist, or his hand claps my shoulder, or his ankle knocks against mine.

While I look at others and approve of their appearances, only to turn and despise them because of the slurs that fall from their lips, Bertie Wells is flawless. He has wrapped himself around my heart and filled himself with my good opinion, and in turn, filled me with his words and charms and gestures. Over time, he only pleases me more.

Kinder.

Wittier.

Sharper. 

More resilient.

More daring.

More intelligent.

Day after day, he improves until he cannot better my endless good opinion of him.

I am halfway through falling before I realise that the floor has given out beneath my feet.

* * *

“Almond cake?”

Bertie and I look up to see Alfred walking into the common room of Mauldin, not bothering to question my presence.

“What did you say?” Bertie asks, looking up from his essay in hope of a distraction.

“Almond cake.” He holds it up. “I promise I didn’t poison it!”

I snort — I’ve always had a morbid sense of humour — and expect Bertie to laugh too. Instead, he straightens and mutters something about fountain pen cartridges, and darts from the room.

Alfred sits down beside me. “What’s all this?”

“Haven’t the faintest,” I say, leaning back over my essay. “Is that cake still up for offer?”

He sets it on the table with a laugh. “Indeed it is. How is your essay going?”

I pick up Bertie’s fountain pen while I respond, unscrewing it. The cartridge is full.

* * *

Later on, I need to kill some rats. There’s one scurrying around in the courtyard of St. John’s and so the porter sends me to Mauldin to fetch their arsenic.

“Where is your arsenic?” I call up the stairs.

James Monmouth comes clattering down the stairs and says, “Why, hello, Mukherjee! It’s rare that I  _ don’t _ see you around these days. When  _ did _ you start spending time around Mauldin?”

“After last Christmas,” I tell him, shaking his hand. “Goodness knows that someone needs to help Bertie Wells keep his head screwed on straight.”

“Indeed, it’s rather a sacrifice on your part,” he says, clapping me on the shoulder.

“Not at all, it’s rather a joy.” I clap my hands. “Now, arsenic? I need to kill some rats, I’m not planning to poison a Melling.”

With a laugh, he says, “In the cupboard under the stairs. See here.”

He opens it and we peer inside. Nothing. Only a rather convenient gap that would be perfect to shove a circular tub into.

“It was there earlier!” Monmouth says indignantly. “I say, who has done away with it?”

“What?” Alfred says, appearing rather suddenly at the foot of the stairs. “What on earth is the matter?”

“We can’t find the arsenic.”

“I’ll take a look in the cupboard at the top of the stairs.”

A minute later, he runs back down with a tub of arsenic, pressing it into my hands. “Here. That keeps happening: every time someone mentions where the arsenic is, it vanished and turns up somewhere else. I think we have a malevolent ghost who died from arsenic poisoning.”

With a snort, I turn to leave before realising something.

_ What is it with this boy and almonds and arsenic? _

* * *

The next time I’m in Mauldin (two days later, a party in Bertie’s rooms), I peer into the cupboard under the stairs before I make my way to his rooms, nothing carefully where the arsenic is.

Once I reach his rooms, I almost entirely forget what I set out to do. Bertie is playing the gracious host, serving up fizz and flourishing out his arms as he talks.

“Bertie!”

He turns towards the sound of my voice and, rather oddly, his face brightens in an enormous smile. “Harold! Come here, I’ve saved you a champagne flute.”

“Oh! Thank you, Bertie.” I cross the room and accept the flute, and as he pours into it and I stare at him, I quite forget that there are others in the room.

“How are you, Harold?” he asks.

“Very well, thank you, Bertie,” I tell him, looking up into his eyes and starting when I notice how intensively he is staring back at me. “What are you doing this Easter?”

He blinks, looking at his shoes. “I don’t know.”

“What did you do last year?” I ask, instantly regretting asking it the moment I do: we all know what he was doing last Easter, the entire country knows.

“Get accused of murder,” he tells me, and his eyes are wide and sorrowful. “I cannot go back to Fallingford this Easter. There’s no worry with my sister, as she’s in Hong Kong with Hazel.”

“Come to London with me.”

His eyes snap from his shoes to my face. “To London?”

“There are theatres in London, if that sells it for you.”

“I don’t need to be sold on the idea of London, Harold.  _ You’re  _ there,” he says, sparkling at me as he reaches out and brushes down a piece of my hair. “There. It was sticking up.”

“Am I that much of an incentive, Bertie?”

With a hand on my shoulder, he squeezes it and says, “Of course. As long as you do not murder anybody.”

“That, my friend, I can promise you.”

He deflates slightly. I cannot image why.

“Say!” I call to Alfred, turning towards him with my champagne flute in my hand. “There’s a real rat problem in St. John’s at the moment but our budget doesn’t extend to buying arsenic when we can just procure it from you. Where do you keep yours, again?”

Everybody is looking at us, as our conversation is the loudest in the room. I see Bertie beside me look about frantically. 

“In the cupboard at the bottom of the stairs,” he says, pointing vaguely in the direction of where it should be. “Come and steal it whenever you need it.”

Bertie, looking quite flushed and worried, excuses himself for the lavatory.

“Is he alright?” Alfred asks. “He’s been dreadfully skittish recently.”

I pause, drumming my fingers against the champagne flute. “Not a clue. Now, I need to go and use the telephone to speak to my brother. I was going to do it later on but considering that Bertie has gone out… I shall do it now.”  


I step out into the hall and shut the door, peering out over the bannister and down to the cupboard below. Bertie is crouching before it, hands shaking as he tries to open the door. “I say!” I call down to him. “Bertie, are you alright?”

He straightens up abruptly, stumbling backwards against the bannister and grabbing ahold of it, staring up at me with wide eyes, his entire frame shaking in a concerning way and his skin paler than anything English person’s skin should be. Even though all the colour has drained from his features, there is a concerningly warm pink high on his cheeks and blotchy up his neck. “Harold! I— this— I swear— I wasn’t— I wasn’t going to use— use— use— use the arsenic— for— I swear—”

I race down the stairs as fast as I can, jumping down the last two and grabbing Bertie by his shoulders. “Bertie. Bertie, breathe. You’re alright.”

He shakes his head and I feel him shaking under my hands. “I— I don’t— Harold— I— I can’t—”

“You  _ can _ . It’s not difficult, love.”

I freeze.

He freezes.

_ Love _ .

I continue. We can address that later on.

“Breathe in, Bertie.”

He tries, but stumbles and gasps and chokes out tears. “I— I’m sorry.”

“No. Don’t be sorry, love. It’s alright. Oh, here, come  _ here _ ,” and tug him against my chest in an embrace. My arms are tight around his back, one hand rubbing across his back and the other gripping his collar. “ **Is this okay?** ”

He nods against my shoulder, still gasping.

“Breathe, Bertie. Follow how I do it, won’t you?”

“I— I  _ can’t _ !”

“Can you feel my breathing?” I ask, and I feel his hand grope against the material of my shirt before finding a place to rest. “Follow that. Breathe in time with me.”

After a moment or two, I feel him give against me and I stagger, bracing myself against the bannister so I do not fall. “There. Now, Bertie, what has you so stressed?”

“I have to move the arsenic.”

“Why?”

“Because… someone will die if I don’t!”

“Bertie, sit down and explain this to me,” I order him, helping him over to the stairs. We sit down beside each other and he curls himself over me.

“In Easter last year, there was a murder.”

“We know,” I say, running my hand through his hair.

“The murderer was my… my best friend. He murdered my mother’s boyfriend with arsenic. He found out it was there because someone announced where the tub of arsenic is because we needed to kill some rats in the kitchen.”

I cannot believe it.

Arsenic.

Almonds.

Donald.

Almond cake.

Paranoia.

Best friend.

‘Best friend’.

I cannot believe it.

Everything ties in at once.

“Oh… oh  _ shit _ , love. I promise, honour bright and other schoolboy words, that I shall never stoop so low.”

“Never?”

“Never.”

“No exceptions?”

“No exceptions.”

He sighs, and the colour starts to floor back into his cheeks. “Do I look presentable?”

“About as ‘an-aesthetic-dragged-through-a-bush’ as you usually look.”

With a punch to my shoulder, Bertie barks, “Fuck you!”

“Ah, there you are!”

He smiles at me, the same smile as before, as we traipse back up the stairs.


End file.
